


before it gets dark

by buckstiel



Category: Campaign (Podcast), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Defector AU, Emotional Baggage, Feelings Realization, Post-Kanan, Reunions, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-01-01 09:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18333440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: The story doesn't end at the decision to become rebels.





	1. Iloh

**Author's Note:**

> my brain has been very bad about letting me write anything longer like i have in the past [vaguely motions to older works] but i love the star wars arc of campaign so very, very deeply and want to trace out these arcs i have stewing in my head so badly that i have to find a way to make it work. in an ideal world this would be a more cohesive narrative not reliant on vignettes but alas, so it goes, etc. 
> 
> updating is going to be When I Can Yank The Words Out, and i plan on each chapter being a stint on a planet as they figure out their place in the galaxy post-roche. 
> 
> title from the journals of john muir.

Our story resumes on a beach.

* * *

 

The sunsets on Iloh are an unusual sort of vibrant unlike anywhere else the crew of the Mynock has ever been. Maybe the system’s star sits at a particular angle, or the atmosphere hugs the planet just right--they don’t guess, don’t talk about it, but every night they stay on that beach, their eyes drift up to the horizon as it pulls the light under, all deep oranges melting into the kind of magenta nothing else in the galaxy can afford to indulge in anymore. It shines off Leenik’s eyes and the sweat beading at Bacta’s temple and the edge of Lyn’s holopad, the bits of transparisteel in the sand worn down into grains. Tamlin lets Tryst out of beach jail, and by the time his pattering feet reach the surf, the day has slipped into evening. Iloh spins quickly, but they don’t let themselves miss the moments where it folds open before them like an apology.

The second night after they landed on the island--a speck in the ocean miles from any other sentient beings--Bacta sighed into the dark something about it being a reminder of the good still left in the galaxy.

“Easy to forget sometimes that it’s not all star destroyers and stormtroopers,” he said.

Leenik didn’t have the heart to tell him it was just a sunset. Or: that’s what he told himself as he held his tongue. He absolutely could have said something, but the debriefing’s talk of “moral centers” was enough for one week, at least. He didn’t need the lecture that was sure to follow.

And it’s not that Leenik dislikes the sunset--he doesn’t. They’re nice to look at even after five days of the same, and some of the darker oranges at the corners of his vision draw on a hazy memory--Rodia, in summer, Venton’s natural highlights of his youth gleaming under high noon. But it’s still just a sunset. It doesn’t mean anything.

The fifth night, as they all file back to the shuttle with the dark pressing in around them, gritty with sand and dried salt, Leenik keeps the memory in his palm. Toys with it, picks at the edges. He can’t remember what they were doing that day, if someone reprimanded them for it after or if they kept it to the backyard of their building. Moral center. They used to kill for money. What kind of center was that?

In the shuttle, they step all over each other. There’s hardly enough room to breathe, and when Neemo inevitably shouts at Tryst for not changing out of his swimwear in the ‘fresher, it might as well be right in all of their ears; and when Lyn and Bacta try to wrangle them all back to some semblance of normal, the whole island is ready to shake apart. He could join once Tamlin and Tony throw themselves in but instead he blocks it out. The solid block of sound is an almost comforting pressure while he twirls one of his fronds with a metal finger.

“ _Guys_ ,” Lyn shouts, and finally all that’s left is the tail end of Tony’s howling, whining that turns to a sniffle. “It’s the end of the week. The Verpine said our ship would be ready not long after… and we still have actual things to accomplish--”

“Can’t this wait until after dinner? I’m starving.” Tryst uncorks a large bottle of whatever Imperial brand of wine he found stashed in the back of the storage units. “We don’t even know where we’re going yet, so let me eat and then--”

“Alcohol is not dinner, Trystan--”

And it starts up again.

There was a time when he and Venton were older, the memory expanding past a single snapshot into a flipbook moonlighting as a holovid. His first clanky sniper blaster pulled close, the barrel peeking past the shrub hiding them, three ghests frothing in the lake below and--three pops, three pools of bile-yellow blood. Venton holding out the blaster, nodding to a fourth ghest breaking the surface.

“We need to deliberate and discuss our options _together_.” This was Bacta, steering Tryst back onto the shuttle from outside and holding the wine out of reach. “Where did you even get this--”

What kind of moral center settled over those ghests and told Venton to pull the trigger? The big brother of the one that sent Chartreuse falling to her death on Phindar Station, right--it’s Aava’s voice that says this, somehow, and it’s her voice again, dark and sighing, that reminds him the debriefing mysteries never poked around hard enough to find that particular corpse.

 _We’ll keep each other in check_ , they said.

They don’t know about Chartreuse.

“We should head to Kamino first.”

Everyone falls silent, frozen in a tableau of keeping Tryst from the wine and Neemo from Tryst, fists halfway clenched to a threat.

“Kamino first,” Leenik repeats. “I think we’re going to need that droid guidance after all.”

X

Five days, as it turns out, is enough time for Bacta to learn not only how to crack open the shells of Iloh’s native mollusks, but also how to prepare them in a way so that both Tamlin and Tryst won’t balk at their plates. Imperial shuttles have a paltry galley setup and an even less impressive stock of supplies, so Leenik can’t hover as Bacta shoves each hissing lump of meat around the pan with a plastic fork. There aren’t any seasonings around for him to sneak into the concoction anyway. No aprons. No roosters staring blankly up through the steam.

The stove is the only thing making any noise--the mention of a single Outer Rim water planet, as it turns out, is enough to force a detente into action, a truce whose terms were leaving Neemo alone with his latest draft, giving Tryst the wine, and absolute silence.

Leenik wants someone to say something. Anything. It’s unnatural, everyone clamping their filters so tightly shut. Tryst’s even wearing pants--the fly might be open, but he’s crossed his legs. It’s not _right_.

“All I was thinking…” He starts slowly, but once their eyes land on him, it all spills out in a single wave. “All I was thinking was that if we’re going to be--y’know--rebels or whatever that we should _may-be_ get D20 back since he has--”

“Oh kriff,” Bacta says, pausing to pinch the bridge of his nose. “The Murderball plans.”

“You said we needed a droid to keep us in check, though,” Lyn says. “You didn’t say anything about--” She mirrors Bacta and sighs. “Do you not trust us to be able to do that?”

She looks over at him, imploring, and Tryst’s hard stare from the corner softens into something just as unfamiliar, a wince of concern that doesn’t dive back under the glittery veneer.

“Do you not trust yourself?”

“ _No_ , that’s not what I said,” he says quickly, and it all spills out like he’s back on Mandalore across from that Falleen. “I mean--I don’t know! What about you? Do you trust _your_ self? Does anybody, really? _Can_ anybody really? I’m fine. I’m the same as always. You know everything you need to know about me.”

The rest of the crew stares--briefly at him, and then at each other. Tony simply yawns.

“Uncle Bacta, I think dinner’s burning,” Tamlin says.

And it was. Cursing, Bacta pulls the pan off the burner and waves away the smoke. The burnt crust settling over the pleasant aroma rolls Leenik back to Rodia, and slipping outside further completes the illusion: the rush of wind and waves over the dark of the night sky, the way he always seems to fall up into it when he lays on his back to take it all in. It was a night like this, the hot sun having fried the overripe fruit at his feet to a crisp, that Venton first called back home to introduce Chartreuse. The holo had been brief, stilted; something about her clashed up against Leenik immediately, and she could sense it too, and he came out to the bank of the river down the street to decompress.

Not take it all in, necessarily, because he wasn’t sure he could do that. He wasn’t going to think about how his perfect older brother had found a bounty hunting partner who actually had the chops for that life. He was going to lie here, take in the distant clouds of the Dragonflower Nebula, and blast the ghest on the distant shore in a single headshot.

Venton was perfect, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be wrong.

“Uncle Leenik?”

Tamlin is peering over his sprawled form, prodding a finger into his shoulder as if he were asleep.

“Hey. Yeah, yeah… what’s going on?”

“Uncle Tryst sent me to tell you that…” he sighs, counting off on his fingers as he lists them out. His face screws up in that determined concentration that makes his heart go soft, not that he’d ever admit it about anyone other than Tony. “That Uncle Bacta can’t cook, dinner is still ready, it’s burnt but it’s still edible, it’s a miracle we haven’t starved yet, and…”

At this Tamlin plops down next to him, gets right up to his ear to whisper--but not before looking around conspiratorially. “He also said that he was worried about you, but not to tell you that. But I’m telling you anyway.”

Leenik’s stomach does exactly two backflips. “I won’t tell him you said anything. It’s our secret.”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll just be a second.”

“Okay!”

He dashes back to the ship before Leenik can thank him, robes fluttering about and trying to get under his feet. But he manages. He always seems to manage. The lights from the ship line his small frame in light, bulbing at the tips of his horns that Leenik swears have noticeably grown since they landed on Myrkr.

A few minutes pass, and he makes his way to the ship. The sand sticks uncomfortably between his fingers and inside the concave ends of his suction cups, and some has managed to get into his boots, and it might as well. The conversation ends abruptly when he shuts the door behind him, but Lyn hands him the plate they already made for him. Tryst grins into his latest forkful, shifting into some dig at Bacta, who splutters predictably, and Iloh can keep on spinning in its slow, slow way.

One sentence slipping out doesn’t have to mean anything.

They can make the jump back to the Roche system in the morning, leave the curiosity behind.

It’s fine. They’re as close as they all have to family, as it’s going to be fine this time.

 


	2. Kamino

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good writing motivators include: the post-swcc con crud rebound

Ten minutes after the jump to hyperspace in the new Verpine-crafted _Mynock_ and Bacta was already pining for the cramped confines of their older quarters. Sure, the cabin fever could climb to unbearable heights at times, and yes, it would be nice for Tamlin to have his own space and for Bacta to really be able to put space between himself and the rest of the crew when their ribbing leaped over the line--but now, right this second, the distances between them all stretch as long as the jumps between disparate star systems. Tryst in the cockpit, Leenik in the kitchen. Neemo holed away in a room that doesn’t even have a name yet, Lyn and Tamlin and Tony sorting through boxes in storage.

And Bacta, alone, in the upper gunnery station he still keeps for himself. He can’t even hear them banging around below. Of all the times he can’t have all those bodies stepping on his toes, it has to be on the way to Kamino.

He hasn’t been back since Order 66, the last image in his memory of the dismal planet the landing platform falling away, Synox bent over and gripping at his eye with blaster fire blazing bright amid the rain. In a more ideal world, Sian’s body would have been beside him in the ship he stole; he couldn’t claim that, couldn’t even claim being able to spot her from the sky. They’d moved her already. So it was just Synox. Just Synox and the rest of his fallen, traitorous brothers and the others they’d slain.

By the time he climbs back down to their expanded kitchen, the rest of the crew is asleep. The door to the cockpit, at least, hasn’t sealed shut, and Tryst’s snoring was louder than the hum of hyperspace pulling at the seams of the ship.

The Verpine hadn’t asked how many seats should have been installed in the cockpit, but there’s enough for all of them, even Tamlin and Neemo tucked away at the back. Tryst’s reclined the captain’s chair as far back as it’ll go, his feet propped up away from the shiny new buttons and dials on the dashboard. The swirling blues and purples on the other side of the transparisteel cast half his face in shadow, deepening circles under his eyes Bacta hasn’t noticed until now. They’re vibrant against the copper of his skin like this, and without breaking his stare he maneuvers into the copilot’s seat.

The fresh upholstery squeaks under his weight, and Tryst opens an eye. He doesn’t say anything, just meets his stare with a soft set of his face ready to fall into something more transparently readable.

“Heh… can’t sleep?” Tryst says, arching his back.

“Just as funny the hundredth time as the first.”

“Glad to know I’m consistently hilarious.” He shifts in the chair to face him better for some reason Bacta can’t articulate, contorting himself to keep his feet where they were. It can’t be comfortable, and if Bacta were to ask how he learned to position his body like this, he knows he’d just get an answer that could be boiled down to “sex reasons.”

And Bacta’s not in the mood.

“You okay?” Tryst’s eyes are half-lidded, maybe still half-asleep, because he leans further into that transparency he hinted at before, some real concern pushing at the edges of the usual smarmy bullshit he takes on.

“Yeah...yeah,” he sighs. “I’m--I’m fine.”

He can’t tell if Tryst is convinced when he twists himself back into a more conventional sleeping position, breathes himself back into a dull purr of a snore, and Bacta can’t tell if he would rather have him convinced or not.

But what he does do: wait until the hourly rooster crow on the kitchen chrono marks the time at least Lyn would be up and about, make his way to the expanded booth by the conservator, and absently flip through a datapad until someone shuffles in for caf.

It’s Lyn. It’s always Lyn at this hour, and she makes a large pot of caf while shooting looks at him every few moments--saying _you look like bantha fodder_ without even opening her mouth because she knows she doesn’t have to.

“Got six more hours ‘til we’re there,” he says, aiming for lightly and completely unsure if it lands. “You think Tamlin would like some flatcakes?”

“If he doesn’t, I would,” she says, falling into the booth beside him. “And I’ll help.”

He’s still staring at the datapad, some annotated receipts for Tryst’s terrible business cards pulled up--all the notes are from Neemo’s account on the file editor from their time on Nickel-5, some vestige of the intersection of boredom and writer’s block.

“Homecomings don’t all have to be bad,” she says after a few moments.

“When was the last time you were on Ryloth?”

She sighs into her caf, fingers tapping along the edge. “Fair enough. You’re not alone, though.”

He nods, holding his lips shut with his teeth, not wanting to say anything that might imply that that could become part of the problem.

*

Whatever transpired at this base of operations was enough to wear away at the Kaminoan’s serene sense of tact--the first one they encounter upon entering the larger facility from the landing pad visibly jumps when she sees them, a hand reaching to clutch the figurative pearls strung around her wiry neck. Taun We, if Bacta remembers correctly. The band around her head is distinctive.

“I apologize for not meeting you at the entrance--what business do you have here on Kamino?”

“We have reason to believe our astromech got sent here a few weeks ago,” Tryst says, all business. “An R2 unit--he would’ve been severely damaged…”

Taun We makes a face--or so Bacta assumes, because in all the time he’s spent around Kaminoans over his short life, he’s never seen them make a face _quite_ like that. It even cut Tryst off, for Force sake.

“Come with me,” she says, turning fluidly on the ball of her foot and gliding down the hall.

“Do we have to? I mean…” Tryst whispers. “Something’s off.”

“I feel like they’re always like that. Aren’t they, Uncle Bacta?” Tamlin says it right into his ear from his piggy-back position.

Lyn sighs. “I can’t think of many other ways to get on their bad side than immediately running off.” And she looks at Tryst, waiting for him to saying something and, finding nothing, turns to Leenik. He’s been weirdly quiet. He flexes each of his cybernetic fingers and shifts his feet in his boots, offering something that could barely be called a shrug.

Bacta looks at all of them against this Kaminoan backdrop and the sight sends his brain into what he can only describe as an earthquake: two plates grinding against each other, slipping and converging into a new force of nature altogether. Tryst and Leenik are standing right where Synox and Charge did the morning they got into that huge fight, screaming at each other loud enough for everyone on base to hear. It doesn’t seem right, the two pairs overlapping each other like that. They’re lifetimes apart but can’t seem to act like it in his head.

He decides not to dwell on it. “Come on,” he says, nodding toward the direction Taun We left, and after a moment’s hesitation they all head off in that direction--across the room, down a set of stairs while Leenik mutters the entire time about the decor motifs the Kaminoans have employed.

“It’s so _sanitized_ ,” he grumbles. “It’s like minimalism, but worse.”

“Me, it’s grunge all the way,” Tryst says. “Plus some florals. Yeah. Dirt and flowers.”

Lyn snorts. “What is that, garden punk?”

It’s been at least a month since Myrkr and still Lyn hasn’t stopped taking every last thing out of Tryst’s mouth at face value. Sometimes he’s talking sense but now--now, Bacta knows he’s just talking to fill a void, maybe to keep Leenik tethered, but who knows at that point. Bacta can’t begin to, that’s one thing he knows for sure.

The lower level where they emerge is something Bacta should recognize: the training stations from his abbreviated adolescence, the mess hall tables, they’re all haphazardly strewn about, moved from their original locations to this glorified hangar foyer. Taun We sits at one of the tables across from another Kaminoan Bacta doesn’t recognize, hills of dust accumulating at their elbows where it’s been pushed from its resting place.

“You’re the real owners of the astromech unit known as R2-D20, are you not?” the other Kaminoan says.

Tryst clears his throat. “Yes, we are. He’s a valuable member of our crew in--well…”

Bacta counts his lucky stars that Tryst pauses to word this carefully. Maybe the fight against Sahdett had given him foresight--or something close to it.

“It’s… imperative that we get him back,” he finally says.

Taun We grimaces at her companion. “There was an incident about ten standard days ago--”

Such is the first of their bad news: Imperial officers with suspected Rebel prisoners in tow landed at the station, the prisoners got free, and they mucked up the whole facility. “Nearly ruined my office,” the other Kaminoan says, who finally introduced himself as Lama Su, the governor of the sector. “Took the droid, destroyed whatever that Minister Jakar was planning--”

“Jakar?” Lyn says quickly.

“Yes, yes,” Lama Su says. “It doesn’t matter anymore, really. I heard he met a gruesome death after the Imperial Gala on Coruscant, anyway. Ship malfunction was the rumor. Between you and me though,” he says at a whisper, “I’m not so torn up about it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bacta catches Tamlin frown, but only for a moment.

“And why is that?” Lyn asks.

Lama Su waves the question away like a pesky swamp-planet insect. “I do apologize for not having what you’re searching for, but there is little I can do at this point. If your endgame is tracking down the astromech, I can give you descriptions of the rebel crew that took him, but otherwise--”

“That’s fine,” Bacta says. If D20 ended up with rebels, it’s just as well. They can’t be any more messy than they are, probably, and they didn’t need one more thing to track down.

After a few moments of tense silence, Lama Su and Taun We depart to attend to other business, leaving the rest of them to stare at their hands, pull at loose strands of their shirts, whatever else they have to keep themselves occupied. After Leenik mentioned tracking down D20, it was all any of them could seem to think of, and now that the trail was as good as cold, no one knows what to do. Tryst and Lyn’s eyes can’t help but float to Leenik’s hip where Sahdett’s lightsaber still sits, and the wrinkles of their worry fold deep in their brows.

Bacta has to think of _something_.

“Hm,” he says. “Maybe if--”

And then the medical device in his arm starts screeching up a storm.

It’s been too long since he’s thought of it, the odd device Jorj Car’das shoved into him, and over the beeping, Leenik and Tryst’s shouting only add to the confusion.

“It’s just a bunch of exclamation points,” Leenik says.

“Yeah, it just--” Tryst sighs. “It’s flashing a lot of lights. Leenik is right.”

“We should really teach you how to read,” Tamlin whispers, and Tryst waves the comment away.

Bacta says something to excuse himself but he doesn’t register what it is, only that he’s standing at the door to the exit of to the landing pad, rain beating against the transparisteel, and then there’s a warm hand on his shoulder, a familiar presence he can sense even without the Force, and in that singular hitch of a breath he wishes the rest of the _Mynock_ were there to help steady him.

The voice is even more familiar, a voice that would call to him in his dreams if the Lesai let him sleep.

“I got your voicemail.”

*

Time stops--it has to, and in a literal sense. It doesn’t stop in the way he jokes about when someone in the crew stays up with him overnight or in the way adrenaline gives him an extra moment to aim in the heat of battle. No, he turns around and watches the rain-soaked hood fall to her shoulders and the spin of the galaxy screeches to a halt in his ears. He can’t breathe but also all he can do is breathe, because he’s forgotten how to speak and his heart is rocketing too quickly for him to do much else than try to keep up.

“You obviously had the right number.”

Bacta notices the differences first: the thick line of a scar along her right cheekbone, a more practical set of armor that covers the skin the old Jedi robes left exposed. The list is short. He’s sure he’s missed something, but there hasn’t been another Devaronian who styled her hair quite like this, whose eyebrows sat in this particular way when waiting for an answer just a few moments too long.

“Sian.”

“Bacta…” she says, almost playfully. Almost. Like she considers it but regrets it, pulls back at the last second. “I have a lot to explain… but so do you, I think.”

Her hand, fiddles with a couple attachments on her belt, coming to rest on a holster holding a dinged-up blaster. Through the fog of his roiling stomach, there’s a swell of that old love again, a well-worn daydream of them returning from a tense mission, stealing away into a munitions closet and bracing each other up against the locked door, limbs tangled together, and the implicit understanding that he would do anything for her, that he’d die a thousand times over, finally, finally finally reflecting back at him in her eyes.

It keeps him rooted to the spot, and she quirks an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t know you made it out of that day alive either. Not until--I’d done a couple odd jobs for Car’das over the years, and one time he got out of me some stories about the war, and…” She nods at the device in his arm. “That doubles as a tracking device, you know. He recognized you from my story.”

“Which one did you tell him?”

“One of the better ones,” she says with a hint of a grin. “That misadventure on Corulag.”

The case of the missing diplomat and the airspeeder chase through the city core--it _was_ one of the better ones.

“You said this wasn’t about you though,” she says, clearing her throat. “What’s going on? What’s this thing only I can do?”

He shelves the daydream before it can replay in his head and brushes some of the mental dust back up along its edges. Right. Right. This isn’t about him. Or them, together. “Why don’t you come meet the rest of my crew?”

If there’s another sentence Bacta consciously knows of that could lead to innumerable regrettable situations, then he simply hasn’t had the time to come up with the possible outcomes. It’s not that he thinks Sian and the rest of the _Mynock_ would hate each other, or even that they wouldn’t mesh as a group--something about it sits heavy and wrong in his gut, swirling around all of them in turn until it’s finally just Tryst and Sian staring at each other from across the table, and Bacta can’t stand to think of it anymore.

Right before they reach the door to the bottom level where he left them, Sian tugs on his shirt sleeve. “Tell me what you’re getting me into.”

Her gaze is deep, intense, and he folds. “A woman we were traveling with died. She had a son, and he’s Force-sensitive, and there’s only so much we can do for him, and I just thought…”

This is what he missed about her: how that hardened shell of a battle-battered Jedi can melt away in an instant to the gentle mystic underneath, the part he knew she longed to get back to; how one long gaze can make anyone she’s communing with feel seen to their core and at one with the Force webbed around them even if they don’t know how to attune themselves to it. The moments after debriefings, when the rest of the cadre and officers slunk back to their own bunks, the two of them would sit together, maybe continuing the debrief and maybe not. Sometimes one of the troopers would sit and stare into space a little while longer, and she’d talk with him softly, a careful hand on his shoulder, and he’d catch up with the rest of his brothers with a little less weight of the galaxy burning into his muscles.

It’s how she looks at Bacta now.

“I’m not a Jedi anymore,” she says quietly. “I haven’t been for five years.”

“Not being a Jedi doesn’t mean you don’t know the Force. That’s the main part we just don’t have--”

“I’m rusty. The Force and I... we…”

“What, not on great terms?”

“Something like that.”

He places a hand on her arm, hesitating for a moment, but when it does land, a zap of heat rides up to his shoulder and spreads through the rest of him, and she’s staring at him with a thought held in the soft furrow of her brow, and he wishes he knows what it means. He wishes he could know what any of them mean when they look at him like that--Sian, and Tryst, and Lyn, and all of them.

“In the message you left,” she says, “were you trying to say that you…”

_Love you? Yes--Force, yes, I loved you more than anything--_

And maybe she’s trying to get him to meet her halfway, but he can’t take that final step. Both of her hands line the side of his face, thumbs brushing along the lines of his cheekbones and pressing into a fading bruise from Nickel-5. There’s a version of himself that wants this and he doesn’t know if that version is the one wearing the skin she’s touching like this. Like he kept at the back of his mind whenever the stress squeezed at his temples too hard.

“Oh, Bacta…” she sighs. Her hands drop. Something like relief rushes through his chest and he can’t pinpoint why before she shoulders open the door to where the rest of them sit. “Best laid plans of womp rats…”

The door swings shut behind her as Bacta can’t get his limbs to work quickly enough to follow behind. Through the wall, Tryst’s overly-loud “ _Whaaaaaaaaaat!_ ” echoes in the chamber, eventually giving way to the distinct splutterings from Leenik and Lyn, and finally when it all dies out into the shock it warrants and Bacta can get himself through to the room, Tamlin yells over the silence, “Your lightsaber is _so cool_!!”

It doesn’t last. It can’t, after all, not like this. Sian is apologetic, shares knowing looks with Lyn while Tryst settles into a suspicious near-glare, and Leenik pulls and pops one of his fingertips against the hilt of his own saber. Sian can’t help them in the way they need and she can’t stay--a debt overdue and a job on Wukkar to help even the score. Kamino wasn’t on the way, technically--“But I think this fits the bill for extenuating circumstances.”

“I’d hope so,” Tryst says, but under his breath as Bacta’s walking her back toward the stairwell, and there’s no indication she heard him.

“I’m sorry this was so sudden, and after so long,” she says, stopping at the door and still in full view of the rest of the crew. She presses a datastick into his palm. “And even if I can’t help the boy, there’s still someone who might.”

Even as Bacta’s hand curls around the device, her hand rests there over his fist; and before he can register her stepping closer, the warmth of a kiss melting into his cheek.

She rocks back on her heels, blushing a deeper orange under her smattering of freckles. She’s beautiful. She’s always been beautiful but five years is a long time to keep all that locked in his head, and as soon as she glances back up, makes eye contact, they’ve pulled themselves back together again--open-mouthed at the start, nails digging into the bare skin along the backs of their heads in some desperate attempt to find and cling to a time where they could recognize each other more fully.

Like all things nowadays, it doesn’t last long. She’s barely pulled away before she pushes through to the stairwell without a look back.

Bacta’s head spins.

“Well,” Tryst mutters behind him, “if she wasn’t dead _now_ \--”

“ _Trystan_!” Lyn shouts, and presumably smacks him in the back of the head from the ensuing noise.

But Bacta can’t be angry. He can only wonder--at the new memory of Sian in his arms, and the mysterious deadweight sinking into his stomach.


	3. Tatooine

The jump from Kamino to Tatooine isn’t long enough to warrant a bender, no matter how abbreviated, but it’s easy to avoid pointed stares and outright questioning with the door to the cockpit locked and sealed. It’s child’s play when Tryst makes an exit with a dig at Leenik’s wig, Lyn’s still-mysterious princess story, and Bacta’s recent make-out sesh--no one’s going to follow him when he’s like this. No one even wants to look at him when he’s like this.

Tatooine. Sian Jeisel just  _had_ to send them to kriffing Tatooine.

Better than Socorro, Bacta said, trying for levity. No one with black teeth there to menace them! Just the Hutts! And Force knows none of them have teeth, black or otherwise.

They’re following a rumor, something Sian picked up darting around Lothal or Malachor or Mon Cala, somewhere around that pocket of nowhere. A Jedi who survived Order 66 turned hermit, biding his time in the dust and sun. A load of nonsense, but a bad lead was better than nothing, apparently, and he was overruled. 

Tryst wishes the bottle he ferreted away with him were wine, something that went down easy and innocuous without all the burning, but the Verpine gin he found stashed in the new galley as a ship-warming gift would have to do. It’s all they have and it’s halfway gone and there’s a call he needs to make. 

It’s the least he can do for being an ass to Bacta. Right? Right.

As it rings, he takes another swig of the gin--the aftertaste reminds him of their medicinal goop but without any of the numbing peace. It just hurts going down, his thoughts skipping like a scratched jizz box record between blinks. 

“Hello--”

“Fling!” he exclaims. “Fling, Fling, Fling, it’s been so long--”

“Trystan? Are you drunk?”

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to--”

“We did get that message you sent, by the way. Interesting trick. What the kriff are y--”

“Listen. _Listen_.” He screws his eyes shut hard enough to get the spinning to stop, and Fling’s cut herself off too with a huff. “We’re going to be coming in to Mos Eisley by sundown. We’d love--”

“Who the kark is ‘we’?”

“We’d _love_ to see you,” he says over her interjection. “Love to take over a couple couches if we can.”

“Tr--”

“ _Byeeeeee_.” And for the first time in as long as his gin-addled brain can remember, Tryst hangs up on the first try. 

The gin hits him strong and he wonders how much he has to keep drinking to maintain a solid buzz, wonders if he’ll miscalculate and black back in with his knuckles hovering over the door to his family’s home. The image skitters as he blinks, replaced by a hazy recreation of Bacta and Sian tugging at each other like they didn’t have a kriffing audience, replaced again by Dalliance’s face on Mandalore telling him their dad was dead. 

He takes another swig from the bottle, screws the top back on, and lets it roll from his hand to beneath the dash. If he lets his eyes slide out of focus to the right degree, he can spot his reflection in the windshield over the swirl of hyperspace, and he bites down on his lips hard enough to tint them pinker than normal, the good kind of sore, and he runs his tongue over them with the thought of--what, exactly? 

The thread disintegrates and before he registers what he’s doing, he’s leaning in the frame of the now-open door, staring down the rest of the ship. Tony drops the bag of fruit snacks he half tore into with a plop.

“Fling said we could stay with her and Mom,” he says. 

Lyn meets his thumbs-up with a skeptical squint. “You talked to her?”

“I did!”

“And she said that yes, we could stay?” Bacta asks, the datapad with Sian’s note in hand, and Tryst doesn’t look at him when he waves away the concern. Fling wouldn’t turn them away, even if she didn’t outright agree. 

That’s family. It’s what you do for family. Even if you’re ready to gouge their eyes out or feel yourself boiling alive just coming at the concept of them from a certain angle. 

“I thought I threw all those out of the airlock,” Tryst says, poking at the fruit snacks with his big toe. 

The tension breaks. KAT tells them they’ve got another three hours before the Tatooine Loaf will be ready to take out of the oven, and it’s three hours to hide the clipboard and use the piano to interrupt the more responsible trains of conversation and pretend like something in all this mess isn’t careening toward a sharp, dangerous head.

*

The hermit, as it turns out, has earned the title. 

He’s not holed up in some tucked-away alley abode in Mos Eisley proper--he’s fully out in the middle of the desert, a lone structure barely a blip on the horizon, a day trip there and back via landspeeder. The Bith band setting up at the cantina were the first to actually spare them a moment to help interpret the diagram Sian drew--a miracle, Lyn grumbled as they left, considering Tryst and Leenik couldn’t keep themselves from making jokes under their breath about the shape of the Bith heads. 

“Given the way that we are,” she said, “it’s a miracle we’re still alive.”

Taking cover outside the cantina in a thin strip of shade, Bacta produced the clipboard--somehow, and Tryst didn’t want to know where he stowed it--and doled out the plan: he would take Tamlin and Leenik to meet the hermit, and Lyn would lie low in the city.

“If anyone knows about lightsaber purifying on this planet, it’s this guy,” Bacta explained. “And we need to pick up some Rebellion leads, see if anyone has maybe seen D20.”

“What about me?” Tryst said, and that’s how he ended up sitting across the kitchen table from Fling for the first time in years.

She’s waiting for him to start talking, and in the meantime their caf has gotten cold. Every time he thinks he’s found a good inroad for explaining himself, he glances at her face again and remembers all over again the specific flavors of disappointment Dalliance and Rendezvous gave him over the last six weeks, how he hasn’t seen any of them in years and then suddenly they’re all right here, suddenly, delivered as if by some invisible hand. 

“Okay, fine,” Tryst says. “I’m a rebel. I joined the Rebellion.”

Fling snorts. “Very funny.”

“It’s a long story that got me here, and it can be funny.” He takes a sip from his cold caf and tries not to flinch. Since when did Fling assume he took his caf black? “I threw an Imperial minister off a roof. That was pretty funny.”

“ _Trystan_ \--”

“Maybe you had to be there--”

“--that’s how you get yourself _killed_!”

He motions to himself. “And yet here I am!” 

She sighs into her caf, throwing the entire mug back. “Well if that’s the most dangerous thing you’ve done, then I _guess_ \--”

He’s normally not one to grimace about danger or risk or anything else he would categorize under “brave and heroic decisions,” but this is Fling. This is his family’s house and their chipped mugs and wobbly table and the rules don’t apply here in the same way. 

“Okay, little brother,” she says, and the mug falls to the table with a clunk. “Spill.”

He wavers for a moment wondering how best to put the incident with Inquisitor Sahdett in context, but the moment passes and he dives into it--the waterfall, the stormtroopers they recruited to their side, the drones rushing forward en masse. He omits the red roping up Leenik’s lightsaber and also the kiss but what do those matter in the long run to her? But the rest of it--the drama rises high enough to obscure his vision completely. The shaded adobe kitchen and the asteroid are one in the same for a few key moments, the most dramatic, the ones he remembers himself as he tumbled down the wall of the cavern, shooting blasterfire into Sahdett’s chest until there was more smoke than blood.

He takes a deep swig from the long-cold caf after the heroic depiction of him collapsing opposite Sahdett’s corpse. “I know,” he says before Fling can formulate words. “Very brave. Very heroic.”

“And that was that?” she says. 

“Mhmm.”

Sighing, she gets up to pour herself some more caf, not bothering to add any sweetener or even the last dregs of blue milk clinging to the bottom rim of the glass carafe. And when she falls back into her seat she squints at him in the way their father used to when he was trying to suss out a lie--or a half-truth, usually, because he knew the way of the galaxy and whatever they were feeding him wasn’t it.

“Your time with this crew,” she says at last. “How many people have you slept with since joining up with them?”

“Uh...hm. Well…” He chews at his bottom lip. “Aava twice...Zoth…so two?” 

“Over how long?”

“Uh...geez, five years?”

At that, Fling raises her eyebrows, sets her refilled mug down on the table, and chews at her thumbnail pensively. It’s unnerving. It’s like when Bacta interrogates him over the dishes or anyone asks about his ability to read or Leenik twirls some of his wig around a finger--something doesn’t settle quite right in his belly.

“I thought you said you would never fall in love for real.”

“Wh--”

“The clone and the Rodian,” she says. “I saw you look at them as they headed out of town. And how you talked about them now. You’re like--you almost boil over with it. It’s gross,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. 

Not long after, their mother groans from the adjacent bedroom, calling for water and whatever leftovers they have from dinner the night before. The scene is almost familiar, the way Fling steels her expression before facing her, the same set of her mouth that Bacta had the afternoon after their ill-fated venture on Cantonica. Not even Canto Bight, but the settlement a step down from it on the opposite hemisphere, and they’d set him and Leenik into the same game of sabacc with Bacta keeping an eye on everything from the next dice table over. Tryst didn’t know how to say no to the free grog, though, and Bacta didn’t know how to complain the next morning. 

“I don’t know why you’re looking so down,” Fling says as she’s refilling a jug of water in the sink. “I bet you could do worse. Considering the rumors, I _know_ you could.”

“I…”

“You can’t lie to your sister. I mean...okay,” she says. “Maybe you could lie to Dalliance, but you can’t lie to me.”

He wants to throw a barb back but it catches as soon as he opens his mouth, something between _watch me_ and _I wasn’t going to_ , and he wonders if the smug satisfaction on her face is something hereditary that the _Mynock_ finds just as infuriating. 

Their mother calls again from the bedroom and Fling brings her the water. Refilling the glass at her bedside, she doesn’t look past what’s in her hands, and as Tryst stands in the door frame, he tries not to dwell. There’s only so much he could have done coming home, knowing his dad was dead. But now: he spots a collection of grog bottles in the corner and cradles them in his arms with enough care to keep the clinking low. He rings them around the trash can by the door. He goes over in his head where the stashes of booze are on the _Mynock_ and considers, for a moment, if there’s reason enough in his blood to get rid of them. 

“Do they know?” 

The door to the bedroom’s shut again, and Fling’s back to nursing her long-cold caf. 

“What do you mean, ‘do they know’?”

“Do the clone and the Rodian know you’re in love with them?”

“Who said I was?” he says before he can stop himself, and Fling laughs--unrestrained, her whole head tilting back. It’s the same way she laughed when he came home after losing his pants in a bet with Musapha’s bully. 

“Every part of you that isn’t your mouth,” she says, wiping a stray tear from her eye. “Trust me.”

*

Lyn returns before their argument about what to have for dinner spreads its roots into something old and unresolved and bitter with age, and with the bag on her shoulder, she further defuses it into nothing. On her way back from digging for backup blast boat parts and checking on news of--

"One of your princesses?” Tryst says hopefully.

“A contact,” is all she says, her eyes straying to Fling. “Anyway, there was a little cafe on the walk back, and I figured you hadn’t eaten… and that they’d be back soon.”

And they were, but not soon enough to catch the food while it was still freshly warm. Tamlin gets in four enormous bites of the meat kebabs and passes out on the overstuffed chair, and Leenik hasn’t lifted his head from the tent of his arms on the table, his whole head slicked with sun balm Fling dug up from the ‘fresher. 

Bacta doesn’t seem sunburned, just exhausted in the way he knots his brow over Tamlin and Leenik like they’re the only people in the room; and Tryst stares even knowing Fling can see him, and for once he doesn’t care. The concern in Bacta clenches at Tryst’s heart. The dejection simmering under Leenik’s aching skin clenches it tighter.

It was never supposed to be like this. Valentines played fast and loose. 

But Tryst can imagine worse things than Fling being right for once.

When Bacta finally speaks, he’s straddling the gulf between numbness and determination, listing off the details of their day in a laborious list. The hermit is Obi-Wan. He didn’t recognize Bacta. He has other duties keeping him on Tatooine and cannot attend to Tamlin. He doesn’t know the means of cleansing a lightsaber, but he knows someone who might, and this person might prove useful for Tamlin as well. 

There’s more to the story. There’s always more when they emerge on the other end looking like this, and Tryst doesn’t know how long it’s going to take, but he’ll wait for it. He’ll hold it and them close when it does. 

He never meant for it to be like this, but he’s in love. And Valentines can only burn bright.


	4. Wobani

Leenik grips the lightsaber so tightly that his hands shake, both of them, and the cybernetic starts to bend the carefully constructed hilt. The sky is dark, huge, unbroken by a skyline grasping for the stars, just grey and roiling and pressing down like a weight. 

Far off, lightning strikes a tall stone mass that reaches high above the grasslands, and one of the tapered outcroppings crumbles. 

It’s gone so terribly wrong.

The lightsaber blazes on, blood-red light roping up until only the tip is Sian’s soft pink, and then there’s a pop in the air, and it’s all crimson, the whole blade, the glint sharpening in Leenik’s enormous eyes. He raises the blade above his head and--

Aava jerks awake. The transport vehicle’s tires clanked against a rock in the mud, and everyone flew at least a few inches out of their seats. Zero’s helmet dinged against the top of the passenger cabin--even with her gaze in and out of focus, the scratch is obvious. Blue fussing over it is even more obvious and confirms past any doubt she may have had, especially after their song-and-dance at the Gala.

Slowly her heart rate returns to something close to normal.

Aava only dreams in flashes--single images, if played back, that offer a jerky sort of animation she can use to piece the story together in the first hazy moments of wakefulness, just before the thread is fully cast aside to the ether. She doesn’t mean to drift off mid-trip, a late afternoon ordeal surrounded by the rest of the _Bluebird_ and a handful of rank-and-file stormtroopers. Something was awry in Blue’s meticulously cared-for ship, and the fling through hyperspace was bumpy enough to force the tossing and turning itself.

It happens.

What doesn’t happen, however, is the crew of the _Mynock_ settling into the crevices of her subconscious. Not even Tryst has made an appearance, ready-made as he is for one common archetype of dream. Leenik is a surprise.

The fluid reel of his movement is also a surprise. That she can recall the most minute of details this long after shaking off the shroud of sleep is the most surprising of all.

Something isn’t right.

“Will you stop picking at the scratch?” Zero huffs, slapping Blue’s hand away. “You’re only making it worse. I don’t see why it matters, anyway.”

“Of _course_ a scratch matters--”

“My HUD still works perfectly fine. So no, this time it doesn’t.”

Leaning away from Blue’s flying pointy elbows, she casts a tired glance to Synox. He’s seated between two stormtroopers, holding his helmet in his lap and tense with discomfort, which could have been from anything--the tight space in which he’s sitting, his helmet being off among fellow troopers, Zero and Blue’s awful and oblivious little mating ritual taking up most of the oxygen in the transport.

He doesn’t meet her eye. She can’t blame him.

She glances out the small window on the other side of her from Blue--Wobani may be one of the most dismal planets she’s ever visited. Cold, gray, and muddy, it’s only fit for something to match that level of inherent misery; so of course the Empire built a labor camp. Prisoner barracks dig into the sheer rock faces around the mud fields, the monochrome monotony broken only by each sector Imperial office. 

“Excuse me, Minister Blue?” one of the stormtroopers beside Synox says.

“Wh--yes,” he says, hastily pulling his arms back from Zero’s personal space. “What is it, soldier?”

“Moff Delco wanted me to brief you on the matter of the facility’s efficiency before you arrived to the meeting. See, Wobani is rich in a number of crucial ores valuable to the Emperor--”

Aava could have gone back to sleep. She _wants_ to go back to sleep. Nothing about Wobani could possibly interest her, much less the Imperial Propaganda department, but here they are. They fly off from Coruscant after the Gala, rendezvous with Synox, and just as they get some lead about unusual activity around the Roche asteroids, some datapad-pusher across the galaxy is requesting an audience.

No one ever said the Roche activity was _Mynock_ -related, but she could guess. Intuition and the Force braid into each other whenever the opportunity arises. She read the reports while waiting for Synox--something was up. And then something was up around Kamino--two somethings, to be fair--and then there’s this dream. 

The pull of the Force around Leenik while they were on Phindar together was never--it never felt like it should have, him being a longtime companion of the likes of Tryst and Bacta, Tamlin in their charge. The Force moved darkly around him, like it knew he was going to kill not far off in the future, like it was getting used to the idea and settling into his specific shape. 

The lightsaber’s new, though. She didn’t know they had Sian’s lightsaber, but it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is Leenik’s hold on it. Is a vibrosword that similar to a lightsaber? How desperate were they to let his suction cups run up and down the hilt?

“So, what…” Blue says. “Does the Moff want me to advertise this planet like some kind of paradise?”

“Ah… I think that would be better explained by Moff Delco themself--”

“Above your pay grade, then. Right,” Blue sniffs. “So what _is_ there to brief us on?”

The trooper sputters in their helmet. “W-Well, like I said, Wobani is rich in a number of ores, and we’re proving to be a more efficient alternative to Kessel for dissident labor forces, and getting more efficient by the month! Moreover—”

“We can work on your advertising copy as a bonus,” Blue says. “It could really use some punching up.”

Aava can imagine the trooper’s gaping mouth behind their helmet, held open in surprise at being cut off with the rest of their speech primed and ready and useless at the back of their tongue. But this trooper is smarter than the average recruit and doesn’t try to push the matter.

The convoy clanks loudly over the rocks, jostling them about, shoulders and thighs pressed more closely together than they should be, really, in what is technically a professional setting. The angle isn’t quite right for Aava to see if Blue is actually blushing from the tangle of Zero’s limbs invading his space, but if Synox’s knit brow is anything to go off of--well.

The Empire should pay her more to maintain her loyalty when dealing with this level of soapy holodramatics. (They should pay her more on top of that to contend with the rest of it: a tax for turning a blind eye on gut-churning injustices, a per diem for the xenophobia high ranking officers spat with their gaze firmly upon her Dathomirian complexion, a stipend for the late nights retooling complicated orders for the egos involved.)

Thankfully they’re closer to the office outpost than she assumed, and within a few minutes of grinding to a halt on the icy gravel, Moff Delco is before them in a stark, grey office. Everything about the Moff is severe--the slicked pull of their hair, the cut of their cheekbones, the degree of fading from their tan skin in under the wan Wobani light. 

“Officially, your unit is here to commend our outpost for the record tonnage mined in the last reporting period,” they say. Something about their voice, either the clipped accent or how it held how directly they spoke, reminds Aava of the Twi’lek that’s taken up company with Tryst’s motley crew. “In reality, I am simply delivering your reassignment in a way as to not arouse any suspicion.” They press a single finger on the edge of a datapad and slide it forward, the title of the brief large enough that they all can read it from where they sit. 

 _Special Rebel Detail: Mynock_.

Aava manages to pluck the datapad from the desk before Blue fully gets his wits about him, and she skims the rest of the write-up. So the Roche activity was them. Inquisitor Sahdett fell by their hands. A number of good Imperial officers vanished off the edge of the galaxy, a few of the names ones Aava recognizes. Gurt was always too much of a sycophant to rise too far, but Shinro--he’d been fun to play with, at least. 

“I’m not sure they qualify as ‘rebels,’” Aava says, tossing the datapad back on the desk.

Blue snatches it up immediately and mutters to himself as Moff Delco sighs. “They were claiming the title as they rampaged through the Lode Mining Corps facility,” they say. “Too much of what they do is unpredictable, more so than the other petty rebel factions we are keeping tabs on currently.”

Leenik flashes behind Aava’s eyes, and this time he’s gripping the hilt of a double-sided red saber in his cybernetic hand. 

“Understandable,” she says.

There’s little room for Zero to loom over Blue’s shoulder in any way that can be deemed “casual,” but he looms anyway, a finger sliding along the lines of a longer paragraph Aava didn’t get to. Blue almost seems to lean into it, the arc of his carefully-coiffed bangs flattening ever slightly against Zero’s helmet, the starched lines of his uniform dulling the longer he finds himself sharing heat with the whirring robot limbs beside him. 

It’s almost obscene. How Moff Delco bares not to comment on it is beyond Aava’s comprehension. 

“We’re really the best unit in the Empire to go after these guys?” Zero says eventually. “They took down a...kriff, an inquisitor, somehow. We’re technically not even a combat squad.”

“You’re the best chance we have,” says Moff Delco. “The combination of your past encounters and the current state of the rest of the galaxy lends itself to this assignment.”

Aava can almost hear Synox biting his tongue. She turns up the song stuck in her head--some inane bridge from a Shelova opening act--and it becomes a touch more bearable.

“When you find them…” The Moff rubs at a pained point at their temple. “Take them all out. Every last rebel on that ship.”

Almost on reflex, Aava lists them out: Tryst and Leenik and Bacta, that Twi’lek Lyn-whatever-the-anthropologist, Neimoidian Sparks, the vornskr Leenik imprinted on, and. 

And.

It should be criminal for a boy that young to bare his mother’s smile at that same impossible angle, to hold her speech patterns so close when such things shouldn’t have drawn his attention. But Tamlin Jorun is a force all his own, and the Empire would rather not compete.

“There are some you’d rather take alive, correct?” Aava says.

 “Not among _them,_ ” Moff Delco says breathily. “Not anymore.”

It isn’t something she can pinpoint in the moment, as it’s happening. But in the months to come, Aava Arek would be able to pull up the scene before Moff Delco’s dead eyes, her own turned inward watching a theoretical, a Rodian with matte-black eyes slicing away combatants from a small Zabrak child, and know this was the moment when the Empire was dead to her forever.


End file.
